How do I get rid of rats in the garden?

A garden rat problem is nearly always an environment problem rather than a plague. Rats need food within a short distance of shelter, and a garden supplies both remarkably easily. Removing either one moves them on faster than any bait, and it is the only approach that keeps them gone.

Safety

What you'll need

• Gloves
• A rigid, rodent-proof compost bin or a base of fine mesh
• Metal bird feeders with catch trays, or a period without feeding (optional)
• Fine stainless mesh and tools for proofing (optional)
• A torch, for dusk observation (optional)

Step by step

1. Confirm it is rats and estimate how many.Droppings 12-19mm with blunt ends, smooth runs through vegetation, burrows 60-90mm across usually against a wall or under decking, and smear marks along fences. Seeing one in daylight often means a substantial population.
2. Find the food, because there always is one.Spilled birdseed under a feeder is the most common cause in UK gardens. Then pet food and water bowls left out, a compost bin with cooked food or meat in it, fallen fruit, chicken feed, and an overflowing or damaged bin.
3. Stop feeding birds for a few weeks.It is unwelcome advice and it is the single most effective step. If you resume, use feeders with catch trays, hang them well away from cover, and sweep the ground beneath them daily.
4. Fix the compost.No cooked food, no meat, no dairy, no bread. Use a rigid closed bin standing on fine wire mesh, and turn it regularly — an undisturbed warm heap is exactly what a rat wants for a nest.
5. Sort out the bins.Lids that close fully, no bags left beside the bin, and a hard standing rather than long grass. A bin store with a solid base and no gap at the bottom removes both the food and the shelter.
6. Remove the harbourage.Stacked timber, pallets, rubble piles, an overgrown corner, dense ivy at ground level, a gap under decking or a shed. Raising a shed on bearers so there is a visible, open, 200mm gap underneath is very effective — rats will not use a space they can be seen in.
7. Remove standing water.Rats need to drink daily. A leaking outside tap, a pet bowl, an uncovered water butt or a blocked gully all sustain them.
8. Check for a defective drain.Rats living in the sewer reach a garden through a broken drain, a displaced inspection chamber cover or a redundant, uncapped connection. Burrows appearing next to a manhole is the classic sign. Report it — the water company or the council will usually investigate.
9. Proof the house before you do anything else outdoors.Whatever you do in the garden, make sure the building is closed up: airbricks meshed, service pipe entries sealed, gaps under doors closed. A garden population that loses its food source will look elsewhere, and you do not want that to be indoors.
10. Get a professional in rather than laying poison.A BPCA or NPTA member uses tamper-resistant stations, records placement, searches for and removes bodies, and knows the label conditions. Many councils also run a rat treatment service, often cheaply. This is not a job to improvise with supermarket bait.
11. Keep the changes permanent.Rats return within weeks if the feeder goes back up and the wood pile comes back. The environmental changes are the treatment; anything else is a temporary reduction.

Tips

• Watch at dusk with a torch for ten minutes. You will learn more about the routes and numbers than from any amount of daytime searching.
• A neighbour feeding birds heavily or keeping chickens will keep the population supplied whatever you do. It is worth a conversation across the fence, framed as a shared problem.
• Never block a burrow with someone inside — it just gets reopened elsewhere and it tells you nothing.

Common mistakes

• Laying supermarket bait blocks around the garden — It breaches most product labels, poisons hedgehogs, cats, foxes and owls through secondary poisoning, and leaves rats dying in inaccessible places. It also does nothing about the food source that brought them.
• Treating without changing anything — A treated garden with a full bird feeder and an open compost bin repopulates within weeks. The environment is what supports the population.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask